'There is a lot to learn from India,' UNICEF health advisor praises India’s Covid program

UNICEF's Senior Health Adviser and Chief of the Digital Health and Information Systems, Unit Karin Källander, Digital Health & Information Systems Unit Chief, UNICEF, on April 19 made a heaped praise on India's Covid vaccination programme. Applauding India's Covid vaccination programme, she said the India story is unique.

“The country was able to deploy not only the Covid vaccine to a huge number of people but also to use technology to augment that deployment and to be able to better deploy services and track the vaccine deployment,” she said.

“And the reason why India was so successful is that there was already an infrastructure to start from. There were national policies in place, and there were data security policies but many countries did not have that so they were starting from scratch,” she noted.

On how India's digital interventions can be replicated in other countries, UNICEF's senior health advisor said, “We have a lot to learn from what India did in terms of creating a health information structure.”